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'With each language we enter into a new system of thought and sensation': Revisiting the work of Renward Brandstetter (1860-1942), Swiss linguist and Austronesianist

Place and Dates: Lucerne, 28-29 June 2010 (University of Lucerne)

Organizers The conference is organized jointly by the Institute of Linguistics and the Institute of Social Anthropology of the University of Berne.

Conference Theme At the occasion of his 150th anniversary, the conference will revisit the work of Renward Brandstetter (1860-1942), eminent Swiss linguist and first true systematizer of Austronesian languages.

Trained in 19th German philological tradition, Brandstetter taught languages at the Lycee in Lucerne and worked for a lifetime on philological, historical, ethnographic and psychological aspects of language. Brandstetter started studying Malay and other Austronesian languages after making the acquaintance of the Dutch Malaiologist Niemann in 1886. He corresponded and exchanged publications across an extensive network of fellow scientists. Using the methods of comparative philology, Brandstetter published a number of seminal articles on 'common Indonesian' (translated into English by Otto Blagden and published by the Royal Asiatic Society in 1916). The four articles of this volume are only a fraction of a large body of research - some 1500 pages - published by Brandstetter between 1886 and 1940. Becoming slightly bitter over the little tribute he had earned in Switzerland for his work, Brandstetter devoted most of his post-1920 research to a project of comparative Austronesian etymology which was more tangential to the development of linguistics of the period, and is less well known. But this project too is evidence of his mastery of these languages, and his motivation to show the range and depth of the conceptual world they embody. We think that it is worth re-reading Brandstetter, tracing the genealogy of his innovative but also idiosyncratic work which is spanning the disciplines of philology, literature, linguistics, history and ethnography.

For the conference, we invite contributions from linguists, historians, anthropologists and other relevant disciplines on the following themes:

Revisiting Brandstetter's studies on languages, 1880-1930 We welcome papers - on Brandstetter's method and linguistic concepts, a field pioneered by Robert Blust's (1986) with his study on Austronesian root theory. - on the scientific networks of his period (1880s to 1930s), how these were constituted, how they interacted and influenced the study of Austronesian languages - on Brandstetter's reception, both during his lifetime and afterwards.

Brandstetter - contributions to his biography We invite research papers - on Brandstetter's biography and the social and political contexts which shaped it. - on the philological tradition that informed Brandstetter's approach to language, and its relevance for science, the polity and society - on the links between the local and the global in his work

Brandstetter and dialectology We welcome contributions - on Brandstetter's work on Swiss-German dialects, dialectology and the lexicographic projects of the 19th and early 20th century which was a formative period for the Swiss nation-state

A short abstract indicating its relevance to one of the themes identified above should be submitted until October 31st, 2009 to: brandstetter-tagungbluewin.ch.